Bacteriocins as food preservatives: Challenges and emerging horizons

ABSTRACT

The increasing demand for fresh-like food products and the potential health hazards of chemically preserved and processed food products have led to the advent of alternative technologies for the preservation and maintenance of the freshness of the food products. One such preservation strategy is the usage of bacteriocins or bacteriocins producing starter cultures for the preservation of the intended food matrixes. Bacteriocins are ribosomally synthesized smaller polypeptide molecules that exert antagonistic activity against closely related and unrelated group of bacteria. This review is aimed at bringing to lime light the various class of bacteriocins mainly from gram positive bacteria. The desirable characteristics of the bacteriocins which earn them a place in food preservation technology, the success story of the same in various food systems, the various challenges and the strategies employed to put them to work efficiently in various food systems has been discussed in this review. From the industrial point of view various aspects like the improvement of the producer strains, downstream processing and purification of the bacteriocins and recent trends in engineered bacteriocins has also been briefly discussed in this review.

KEYWORDS:

• Bacteriocinogenic culture
• lantibiotics
• induction factors
• heterologous expression
• biosafety

Acknowledgment

This work is carried out with the support of “Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ011287022016),” Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea.

Eldin M Johnson thankfully acknowledge the fellowship grant from Department of Biotechnology (BT/PR6486/GBD/27/433/2012), Govt. of India, New Delhi, India.

R. Jayabalan acknowledges the support given by the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela (Odisha), Department of Science and Technology (SERB/F/5150/2012-13), and Department of Biotechnology (BT/PR6486/GBD/27/433/2012), Govt. of India, New Delhi, India.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest disclosed in this work.